Notice username was also the same. Right after I posted on Ars, I saw it made Slashdot. Copy/Paste. It's China; that's how we do it here. Since I've actually spent some time playing with one of these Allwiner based tablets, I thought I'd share my experience. Sorry for the lack of originality on the repost.

I live in Shenzhen, and here in China you can pick up these Allwiner based tablets for about $100-$125 USD. My buddy couldn't resist a bargain and bought one a few weeks ago. I was surprised how well it worked out of the box. Decent performance browsing heavy pages, and the all the 3D games I could throw at it ran smoothly. That Allwiner blows the Rasberry’s CPU out of the water.

Initially, I was tempted to get one. Then I started noticing the problems. The accelerometer hadn't been properly calibrated or mounted at the factory, meaning some racing games you have to hold the device at a 20 degree angle to drive straight. When the battery started getting low, I plugged it in to its proprietary charger only to find out the touch screen doesn't work when charging.

Then about a week later my buddy said the screen popped out after he left it charging overnight. Turns out the battery had swollen up. All these issue point to shoddy cheap components and lack of testing and QC. With only $100 to spend, suggest a used Kindle or Nexus 7.

This reminds me of one of my roommates in college, who never took or needed to take any drugs. He was top of our class, dual majoring in Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics at an Ivy League school. One day I saw him lying in his bed throwing torn papers in the air, while laughing like something out of American Beauty. When I asked what's up, he continued and said something about the elegant beauty of the laws that govern our universe. By the end of the semester, episodes like this didn't even faze me.

Back in the stone ages or dark ages, I’m not sure this kind of mental state was good for survival, let alone his ancestor's reproductive opportunities.

MIPS and ARM are very similar Instruction Set Architectures. While I've only taking a cursory look at the new ARM64, it doesn't seem as clean as MIPS64. So with the same level of optimization, MIPS should be able to get a better performance per watt and higher IPC. SiByte had working MIPS64 CPUs 12 years ago. MIPS used to dominate the TOP500, but recently Intel has left them in the dust. So I don't see how Samsung is going to do any better with ARM.

Then again, if x86 can become the IPC leader, any ISA has a shot. Samsung is going to need a few Jim Keller's of their own to pull this feat off.

Colorado and Washington passed marijuana legalization for recreational use. We gained a little more freedom in some states.
I don’t even smoke pot or tobacco. But It's clear that prohibition does nothing but make criminals rich and overcrowd our jails with non-violent citizens.

Sorry, "ARE why". I didn't get any sleep last night and forgot Slashdot still lacks an edit button.

Big daring projects like the Apollo program and Mars Curiosity, is the reason why I love NASA so much. It's one of the few Federal programs I would actually like to see expanded. They do so much with so little. I hope whoever wins this next election finds a way to expand their budget.

“We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft their designers builders navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.” Carl Sagan,

"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
-Josef Stalin
With the election this close, I really hope it's the voters, not fraud, that decides the next president..

Electric, gas or hybrid, any car fully submerged in salt water is heading to the scrap yard. Why pick on Fiskar because it's a hybrid?

Apple's dug themselves into a hole in this one. They have an app that suffers from feature creep and is a resource hog. The only way to fix both issues is a complete code rewrite and interface redesign. Best case they will successful in both areas, but people will still complain that they don't like the new UI. Worse case, they just pull a "Final Cut Pro X" and still have a memory/CPU hog that does less than before. Hopefully they chose the former, and are just taking their time to polish it up.

This tech is useful in everything from game controllers to rockets. John Carmack was just talking about he re-used his Armidello rocket code in head tracking controller software. I hope this also trickles down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk

Every heard of 2880×1800 retina displays? Like to play your games at 60FPS? Well, as someone rocking one on a 15" monitor with a mid-low end GPU, I frequently run into this issue under Linux. And let me tell you the current system is terrible. Mac OS can do it, Windows can do it, If Linux wants to get competitive, they need to fix this issue. Just a few days ago, I fired up Tux Racer for a friend to play. I think I had to reboot after that fiasco.

I don't care how it's resolved, different TTY or _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN. Both sound reasonable. But I want my apps to be able to change resolution, even if it breaks your perfect paradigm.

I'm fine with this as long as any revenue generated from this is going towards science or advancing NASA's missions.

There is so much disinformation here. Just get yourself any standard $5/month VPN service. Set it up, and test it at home before you leave. Problem solved! Here's a great list:
http://lifehacker.com/5940565/why-you-should-start-using-a-vpn-and-how-to-choose-the-best-one-for-your-needs

Now about the other suggestions. Yes, the ALPHA tor correctly configured with bridges works today. But by the time you get there, China may have figured out how to block it again. As mentioned before, it's a cat and mouse game. Not to mention the fact that pages load about 10-20x slower over tor than they do over a regular VPN. This is only something I like to play with and your are nuts and a cheap bastard if you want to use it for your work.

The third option suggested here is to setup your own personal VPN. This is what I have done. I have one to my home computer and one running on Amazon EC2. They both work fine, but you have to know what your doing. If you haven't setup a dozen VPNs before and can't tell me what MTU is stay away.

Even in the major cities, Internet access in China is much slower than most places in America. The fastest Internet you get at home or high end hotels is 5Mbps/1Mbps with 1Mbps/128 the standard. Go into the rural countryside and even the 2 major Cell carriers may not offer Internet. Locals use dialup or deal without. Small towns are somewhere in the middle. Also note that you'll need a L2TP VPN for your smartphone since PPTP VPNs are blocked by cell carrier.

Exactly, pure hydrogen is no more dangerous to handle than a canister of compressed gas. This youtube video shows massive weather balloon purposely set on fire. The burning latex is more dangerous than the mild flame from the hydrogen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvpK9cl0No
There are so many current scientific and medical uses for helium, it blow my mind that the government lets us waste them on party balloons. If safely is really the issue, then let's ban candles for birthday cakes. That poses a far greater risk than pure hydrogen party balloons.